Of Hammocks, Car Accidents and Lazy Afternoons
by Isabelle
Summary: Second Part added, Chuck's POV. She doesn’t show her feelings often, not as often as he does, but when he sleeps and she watches, she admits to herself that their children will be beautiful. Chuck/Blair.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: Of Hammocks, Car Accidents and Lazy Afternoons**

Author: Isabelle

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimers: I do not own anything.

Summary: She doesn't show her feelings often, not as often as he does, but when he sleeps and she watches, she admits to herself that their children will be beautiful.

Spoilers: Any aired episode is game.

A/N: The best BETA in the whole world is Tati who corrects faster than I write. She rocks.

--

_"You know you love someone when you can spend the entire night just sitting by the fire watching them sleep." – Gram (Dawson's Creek)_

She doesn't show her feelings often, not as often as he does, but when he sleeps and she watches, she admits to herself that their children will be beautiful.

It started on a December night, the first night they spent together after months of being apart. She lay with her eyes closed as he stared at her, and once she felt him slip into slumber, she dared open her eyes. His face was so close that his breath became her breath, and she was taken aback by the intimacy of the moment.

She was in love with Chuck Bass. This tugged a smile at her lips because if you would've asked her a year ago… well, maybe longer than a year, she would've laughed it off.

Yet here she was, his face inches from hers, and she was in love with him.

She raised her hand ever so slightly and touched the soft hairs on his hairline. They were soft and smooth, like a baby's. Not that she knew what a baby felt like, but they were definitely soft. And they were blondish. Slightly blondish.

She leaned in and placed a butterfly kiss on them because she loved those little hairs. He stirred, and she was still. She didn't want to break the December night magic of their union.

She thought about how he could break her if he really wanted to, because she's so very attached to him that all he does hurts her more deeply than anything Nate ever attempted.

His hand slid up between them, sleepily touching her face. He started snoring, and she held in a giggle.

She kissed his fingers and pulled his hand down to inspect it. He had smooth, manly hands. The only callus was on his thumb from all the text messaging he engaged in. There was also a dent on his index finger from where he wrote. She ran the pad of her index finger over the dent. She loved that little dent and wished she could tell him.

He kept his nails short and the cuticles pushed back, and she envisioned a time when they could get matching manicures. Chuck was the type of guy that didn't mind them and even made them seem the most natural thing for a man to do.

His hand fidgeted, and she dropped it. She'd stare at him another night – perhaps when it wasn't so cold.

It was an afternoon that they fall asleep together. The flowers were in bloom because Spring was clearly here. The wind was just perfect, so she decided to open her window and let the breeze in. They lay on her bed, attempting to study, when he began nodding off, phone in his hand and shoes off his feet. So she crawled to him, he enveloped her in his arms, and they fell asleep together.

She woke before him, facing the purple of his shirt. She studied the button there and decided to touch it. This made him roll over and begin the snoring she was now used to. She crawled a bit to look at him more carefully and studied the way his jaw connected to his ear.

He was etched in perfect stone, and she reached out to touch it because it was calling to her.

The skin of his face was smooth and freshly shaved. She liked when he was like this, smooth and smelling of his Dior aftershave. She leaned her nose in and smelled the skin where his jaw and his ear connected and sighed contently.

She didn't think she had ever loved a smell more. He mumbled, and she pulled back, fully prepared to close her eyes and pretend to be asleep, because she would die of embarrassment if he ever caught her. Because that damn smirk (that she loved so very much) would take over his now-peaceful features, and she would be ashamed.

This time, Summer went the way it should've gone. He joined her in Paris, and they visited her father in his vineyard.

It was another lazy afternoon on a warm June day when, as they lay snuggled on her father's hammock, he fell asleep before her. His hair was longer than she would have liked it to be, but she believed he refuses to cut it just to annoy her. So this was the perfect moment she had been waiting for. She pulled the small sheers from her pocket and leaned up to begin snipping away at his hair.

He was going to hate her when he woke. He was going to absolutely hate her, but desperate times called for desperate measures. They couldn't possibly show up at Yale with him looking like some wild man.

He stirred a few times, but the soft sway of the swing, the warmth of her body, and the breeze kept him asleep.

He murmured often in his sleep, she noticed. She wondered if years from now, when parts of her had been Botoxed, would they lay on swings and nap the afternoon away?

His hair now looked like he should run to the salon – which she knew he would do the moment he saw all the fallen brown hair on the lawn. She smiled and buried her nose in his hair and fell asleep right there. This was the perfect place to do so.

They were in college and had been broken up for a few weeks. After a week of dancing around each other, they apologized and decided to be friends. Their new friend status led them to fall asleep together. Now it was early in the morning, and he was in her arms, his head resting on her chest, his face turned towards her. She curled her arm around his head and gently held him, because she knew now that this was the most precious man in her life.

He loved her with such passion that he often messed up and upset her, and so they would break up. Their love was a fiery, passionate love that consumed itself and was often left in ashes. But in moments like this, when they would fall asleep together and she got to watch him, she realized this was the man for her.

When they woke, they pretended it was normal and went back to being 'friends'. They saw other people, but his eyes still burned into her as he watched her with her boyfriend, and she couldn't remember a moment she had watched her new boyfriend sleep.

She smelled his cologne one morning and instantly knew it was him.

He was close by, and the butterflies that are twin souls of his fluttered in happiness.

She realized at that moment that she didn't care how mad he made her, she wanted him back in her life. She went to tell him, but found him making out with a blonde by his limo.

There were tears in her eyes when she crashed her new car that afternoon, and she couldn't remember anything but the flashing lights of the ambulance.

When she woke in the hospital bed, he was asleep next to her bed, her limp hand in his and his head on her lap.

There were dark circles under his eyes and his hair (which needed a cut once more) was mussed and disorderly. His tie was gone and his sleeves were rolled up. He looked like he had been sitting by her bed for hours.

She almost died, she told herself. She almost died.

If she had died, she would never have been able to watch him sleep again. All of the nights, for the rest of his life, he would be watched by someone else, and she hated that thought. Because he belonged to her as much as she belonged to him.

His sleep was hers and only hers to watch.

When he woke, he held her without saying a word, and she could see the fear in his eyes.

He told her he was afraid that he had lost her, and she told him then that he had always had her. She had always been his, since the moment they were first together all those nights ago in his limo.

She didn't need to look at him this time as his arms surrounded her, and she didn't ever want to leave his embrace. She loved him more than her Chanel bag collection, and that was saying a lot.

It wasn't long after that he asked her to marry him, and she only had one answer to that question.

So, a few weeks later, today, he is once more asleep as she studies him.

She doesn't show her feelings often, not as often as he does, but when he sleeps and she watches, she admits to herself that their children will be beautiful.

--

The End


	2. Chapter 2

**Title: Of Hammocks, Car Accidents and Lazy Afternoons – Part 2**

Author: Isabelle

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimers: I do not own anything.

Summary: His feelings are a long run-on sentence written on his forehead whenever he looks at her and, despite his best efforts to hide them, she always sees them – but in moments like this, when she sleeps and he watches, he admits she's changed him. And there's no going back.

Spoilers: Any aired episode is game.

A/N: Special thanks to Tati – who is an awesome BETA. To all my reviewers, you guys are so very fantastic, I can't say it enough!

--

His feelings are a long run-on sentence written on his forehead whenever he looks at her and, despite his best efforts to hide them, she always sees them – but in moments like this, when she sleeps and he watches, he admits she's changed him. And there's no going back.

It started on a December night when they both decided to stop being fools; fools in love, but fools nonetheless. She lay with her eyes closed, resting her soft head on his arm. His arm tingled because he dared not wake her from that spell. She was breathing slowly, with a slight smile on her face. Her breasts were exposed and she looked completely relaxed.

He inspected the small freckle on her neck – the one inches from her collarbone. That freckle knew him well. He loved that freckle. He bent forward and kissed it softly, a mere whisper of a kiss.

There by her neck, he inhaled her scent – not that perfume she wore – but the scent of her skin, the scent of Blair. It intoxicated him until he couldn't think. Her scent was strongest by that freckle on her neck, in the inside of her elbows, behind her knees and, of course, between her legs.

She shifted a bit and he paused, staring at her lashes… she didn't move any more, but her hand carelessly moved and tangled itself in his hair, pulling him to her. He complied and laid his head as close to her as possible so he could watch her sleep. Because this time it was real, this time he wouldn't mess up, because a life without that freckle would be no life at all.

It was a lazy afternoon and they were on her bed. She opened the window to let in the Spring breeze, and he began to doze off. Because having her next to him on her stomach, with her bare feet playing in the air as she bit delicately on the tip of her pen, her attention on the Anatomy book, made him happy.

He felt happy and relaxed, thinking he could spend the rest of his life like this. He attempted to play with her hair, but she reminded him he had a final the next morning. So he began to doze off and, before he knew it, she had given in and crawled next to him, placing her head on his chest. His chest swelled with what one could call love, and he held her close to him, kissing her head. Before he knew it, she was asleep.

So he studied her hand, because he could study her when she was like this. She was limp in his arms, completely trusting and completely vulnerable. He grabbed her hand and kissed her fingers. Her nails were painted a soft pale ivory-pink that reflected the most ladylike taste. It reminded him of his mother; always the lady. Her thumb was a bit stumpy and he knew she hid it because she didn't like it. So he kissed it because he liked it just the way it was.

She mumbled into his purple shirt and he held her closer. He would never admit to enjoying just holding her, but he did. He just couldn't help himself.

She had freckles peppered all over her skin, and he liked to play a game with them. Count the freckles and make a shape. Once in a while she would catch him, and he would lie flawlessly, but her hidden smile told him he was crap at lying.

He liked her skin this time of the year; it was pale and pure – like alabaster. Once the Summer came, she turned into a golden tone that, though he loved and appreciated, was not as perfect as the pale shimmer her skin naturally had.

Sleep slowly took over him and the last thing he remembered was her soft hair tickling his fingers.

She dragged him to Paris for the Summer, and he attempted not to protest too much because the prospect of spending an entire Summer together with the UES far far away was still very frightening to him. But the thought of hurting them like he did last year was even more frightening so he conceded.

He hardly recognized her in Paris, at her father's vineyard that was so far from civilization and prying eyes. She wore jeans around the house with small little shirts, flowing shirts that revealed her smooth stomach. He realized then that she was so very soft and supple. She was not rail thin like most girls he had had in his bed. She was slightly filled, her skin was soft, and he liked squeezing it because it removed any stress he might have. He told her he liked her just like this – that he didn't ever want her to lose weight, and she stared at him for a while.

He noticed that she was eating a bit more and enjoying it. She laughed when he almost set his hair on fire attempting to turn on a Bar B Q. They were relaxed and happy, and he couldn't believe how young and alive he felt. They took slow walks as the sun set and talked crap about people they both disliked and made up fake plots to bring those people down. He even chased her once as they raced to the house's entrance. He fears that the peace was ending, because he was enjoying himself too much.

Harold had a hammock by some plum trees, and they were packed with fruit. So he grabbed some, and they lounged in the hammock together, her nearly on top of him as he fed her the plums he'd been cutting up. Her laugh was soft and melodious, and he thought about how he'd never loved her more.

When the last of the plums were gone and his hands were sticky with their juice, they let the breeze lull them to sleep. He thought they _both_ were asleep. When he woke, he was missing parts of his hair and he threatened to leave her in Paris while he left for New York. He knew she was sorry that night after a stop at a hairstylist. He now had hardly any hair and he didn't want to talk to her. But when she crawled onto him and kissed his back, he sighed and gave in, pulling her to him. She fell asleep in his arms, and he was tempted to cut her hair and see how she liked it, but he loved those sun-kissed curls entirely too much. Her knees were curled to her chest as he held her from behind.

He noticed she had a bruise right above her knee and remembered her bumping into the table as she stood up some nights ago. The pads of his fingers softly played with her bruise. He kissed the tips of his fingers and brought them down to her skin.

She murmured that she loved him in her sleep, and he was able to sleep once more.

He followed her to Yale, because what else was he supposed to do? It was apparently to no one's surprise that they broke up a few weeks into their freshman year. He was miserable for over two months. Just miserable. He couldn't go back to being Chuck Bass, because no one gave a damn that he was Chuck Bass. Nathaniel and Eric had gotten tired of his whining, and he was getting tired of drinking. It was a few weeks later that they could be in the same room without wanting to kill each other.

So they begin a tentative friendship, and he thought he loved her more than ever as she talked about random things. He watched her in class, taking furious notes as his own paper remained blank before him. He watched from afar as random guys thought they had a remote chance of getting in her pants, and he pitied them.

It was near finals when he realized he was failing, and she was the best student in class. He swallowed his Bass pride, and she agreed to help him. He didn't know what it was about them and a bed that apparently led to cuddling the way them in a limo led to sex.

He woke to her arm protectively surrounding his head, and he wanted to keep it there. His cheek was resting on her soft chest and he closed his eyes because he wished they were back in France where nothing could touch them. It was an odd feeling that filled him. He wanted to marry her, like grown-ups say. He realized then that he wanted her to be it. The one. The one that changes him and makes him grow up, the one that he could laugh with, plot with, love with, grow old with.

That thought scared him so much that he was shaking. When they're both awake, he left he finds comfort in someone who was the opposite of her, and he felt he could breathe again. He found comfort for many weeks in others who were nothing like her.

Once their slimy bodies were off him, he drank. That was when it happened – she got a boyfriend. Nate the third, which is what he was calling them. Enumerating them.

Nate III was tall, with tousled blondish-red hair and a sharp jaw. He wore Lacoste and was the captain of the crew team. He looked like someone shook him out of a J-crew catalog, and Chuck hated him. He held her hand and led her around school, and Chuck had to prevent himself from chucking his phone at the man's obnoxiously large head.

One afternoon, he rounded a corner and saw Captain Crew sitting on the arm of a chair, and Blair leaning into him, her hands in his hair and smiling down at him adoringly.

Chuck felt like dying because it should have been him she was smiling at. He wanted her back; he wanted her back so badly that he couldn't breathe. So he grabbed one of his many comfort girls and started making out with her on top of his limo.

He was at his apartment, watching the girl get dressed when Blair called him. He picked up the phone so fast that he didn't even care about sounding desperate. But it wasn't Blair. It was a nurse.

His stomach felt empty and hollow. The woman told him that he was Blair's number one speed dial and she had been in an accident.

He honestly didn't even know how he got there, how he even made it there in one piece. When he saw her on the hospital bed, he was pretty sure someone was going to have to put him on some type of medication because he was close to losing it. They were a couple of hours away from their friends and family, so it was up to him to sit by her bed. He never left her side; he held her hand and looked at her bruised face. He watched the rise and fall of her chest, and there was a permanent lump in his throat.

It had been a few hours, and she still hadn't woken. He would never admit to crying. A bit later, he woke to find her looking at him, and he wondered if she watched him the way he watched her.

He was so very gayishly emotional that he held her against him and let the fear of losing her completely wash over him. She didn't say anything about the wetness in her hair. He told her he loved her and didn't want to be without her. And there was a smile from her cracked lips, and he swore he would try his very hardest to be that man for her. To be that man for himself. Because she made him want to be a better man. He had been running from what she bought out in him for so long that he couldn't remember stopping. But he was done running, not when running could do this to her. He just couldn't.

Because he wouldn't know how to go on living if there wasn't a sleeping Blair to watch. He would never see the freckle, never love her stumpy thumb, never appreciate her winter skin, never watch her curls in the setting Parisian sun, never feed her plums, and never love her with his body and soul.

He just couldn't. It wasn't an option. Because she was imbedded into his soul; she was tattooed there, and he couldn't get her out no matter how many women he slept with, how hard he scrubbed his skin, how much he claimed to hate her – she was part of him. She was the part his soul was missing. The better half of it. The part that made him human and not some callous teenager with too much money and a cold father. In the end, Blair created the real Chuck Bass, redefined him and made him happy. He once told Nathaniel that happiness was not on the menu. It was the only thing he could see on his now.

She fell asleep in his arms after he asked her to marry him. She was happy – he made her happy.

His feelings are a long run-on sentence written on his forehead whenever he looks at her and, despite his best efforts to hide them, she always sees them – but in moments like this, when she sleeps and he watches, he admits she's changed him. And there's no going back.

--

The End

a/n - someone suggested I write Chuck's POV so here it is.


End file.
